PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use. date: 07 June 2020

Empathy, Evolution, and Altruism

Empathy, Evolution, and Altruism

Chapter:

(p.309)
18 Empathy, Evolution, and
Altruism

Source:

Altruism and Altruistic Love

Author(s):

William B. Hurlbut

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195143584.003.0026

The Cartesian dualism of mind and body is an unsatisfactory sidestepping of the central issues under discussion here. The beginnings of sociality are seen even in the most primordial configurations of living matter. The progressive integration of an organism's “inner life” with its external action and presentation of self was further extended in Homo sapiens with the radical cerebral reorganization that accompanied the transition to human upright posture. Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand the situations, motives, and feelings of another. It is so natural to us that we rarely ponder the mystery of its mechanism. Human existence is by nature intrinsically social, located within the context of community and culture. Insight into the other person enabled by the capacity for empathy can be used for open communication or for calculated deception. The cultural universals seem to cluster around the two central issues of flourishing and freedom.

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PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use. date: 07 June 2020